


Rock of Ages

by gebieterin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sburb/Sgrub Sessions, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-28
Updated: 2020-01-28
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:14:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22455553
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gebieterin/pseuds/gebieterin
Summary: Revolution brewed at any time, it was just a matter of finding out which fraction was cooking it best. You had seen so many revolutions come and go, you would kill for any new angle. Literally. Still, even if not new, it amused you that this time around, there was both a tyrian Heiress and a Sufferer reborn. You could work with that. As an avid strategist, you had kept up with what changed and turned likes tides at sea.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Rock of Ages

You are _old_. Old as globes, as they'd say nowadays. On most days, you do not even think about exactly how old you are. (Well, or maybe you can't remember exactly, but admitting this would just be embarrassing.)

You have seen the beginning many an era, been among the first to foray on to the stars, and among others witnessed when adult trolls were exiled from the home world to force expansion of the Alternian Empire in space.

You have seen the end of many an era. You have also seen your empress start to take a turn for the worse, when it became clear that her hunger for expansion only masked an emptiness in the darkness of her soul she tried to fill with ever new cruelties. But some hungers could never be sated, and when atrocities became common, all waited with bated breath whatever the next level still could be.

Oh, you were cruel yourself, back in your time. But you grew out of it, with time. Time has a way of smoothing down any rough edge, polishing yours where it ground away and left abrasions on your empress's soul.

There is enforcing hierarchy, and there is blatant waste.

There is a difference between killing time by killing some landdwellers here and there, or by wiping out a whole caste in one go. Repeatedly.

Or declaring a whole new generation of newly spawned conscripts unfit for service, therefore fit for culling. Repeatedly.

It became clear that while adult trolls were exiled at first to protect the young from them (or rather some of their more mutinous ideas), these expats would now have to protect the young from Her, for the continued survival of the species. And so, you started. Anything to alleviate the boredom of a long life. (It wasn't as if you had anything better to do, really.)

Many changes did not come easy to you at first, but you learned to adapt. You had to, or share the fate of many from the older generations and fade, or worse, be ridiculed in a time where they no longer understood social conventions and technical advancements. It was one of the curses seadweller longevity brought to balance its blessings and status. If you wanted to stay on top of the food chain, so to speak, you had to stay on top of everything else that happened. It was tiring at best, most times. Interesting only at rarer occasions. Technical advancements were among the more interesting forays you liked to follow. There were little to no crazy novelties your ship wouldn't sport as one of the first. Some might call you eccentric for it, but few dared to do it out loud. (Fewer even where you would hear it.)

You suspected that your empress only found the changing tides of time tiring and therefore clung to how things had been.

However, progress only could be delayed for so long. What was held still for too long was sure to atrophy.

The first step was easy.

Being an Orphaner never really leaves you. A lusus is a lusus, as terrifying a lusus as it might be. Better yet, time had tempered the beast to you, as it knew you to carry for it the most delicious treats. Or more likely time had just tempered the beast, period, and it was as tired as you had been time and time again. (It did not sigh its deadly song when fading, as you had half suspected it would. Maybe half hoped it would. A wager was no fun if the stakes were low, anyway.)

Either way, once that first step was done, destruction by the Speaker was no longer an option of threat for the Empress to use. You had no idea if anyone suspected your hand in the strike. You could not rightly say you cared. Because easy here just meant that you survived, if barely. It took you time to heal, long for your body and even longer for your mind.

The second step was easy.

Revolution brewed at any time, it was just a matter of finding out which fraction was cooking it best. You had seen so many revolutions come and go, you would kill for any new angle. Literally. Still, even if not new, it amused you that this time around, there was _both_ a tyrian Heiress and a Sufferer reborn. You could work with that. As an avid strategist, you had kept up with what changed and turned likes tides at sea. (Well. Apart from these few centuries when after killing time in all manners pretty and horrid you had just... stopped. It took many happenstances and Imperial ORD---ERS to get you back into momentum, but that was then, not now.)

You had half a mind to just stay out of things this time around and just watch how it played out. However, a fleet admiral had to at least feign a bit of interest. It was so laughably easy to find which branches had turned traitor, where a fleet of Sufferists thought themselves hidden behind asteroids or even in the middle of your fleet. Where grublings of an Heiress and a Sufferer and their entourage played at revolution, shepherded by the very same religious leaders they thought their own faithful followers. And depths, had you ever been so young and naive? You nearly felt nostalgic for such innocence and trust.

You set the Mirthful Church Fleet only on those religious hardliners who would be more harm than use for the hatchlings. It gave the chucklefucks something sensible to do, for once, and kept the the more tempered elements of influence unharmed. (And unharmed they would stay, at least until you deemed them harmful for the grubling revolutionists.)

Now, the third step, while still easy (you really craved a new challenge; everything was just repeating in patterns you knew by heart by now), was just a tad trickier.

Establishing contact, as anonymous fleet insider at first, had still been easy.  
You knew how to gain trust, then how to sway, how to guide the little revolution away from the blatant errors those before had made.

Initiating real contact, revealing yourself, that always held a risk.  
You waited sweeps before you dared. The grublings had been so afraid at first, caught between mortified awe and deferential horror. A grudging trust when it became clear that you would not turn them in to be culled, much the contrary. However, fear could inspire mistakes, but you caught what could have become traitors swiftly enough. And the threat of exposure alone lent your little descendant into your iron grip, another pawn the better to manage your new little empress. Oh, she was not as naive a little guppy as she could have been. And still, she was no match for your experience and age.

She thought herself cunning, they all did, for knowing where you were steering her. They were so painfully young and inexperienced, you indulged in being gentle enough not to let them know where you were still pulling all strings. You still held the leashes but held them relaxed.  
What you did not hold was a hunger for more power and responsibility than you already had. (Maybe once she was older, some adult molts from here, when the inevitable loss of her lowblooded posse would have either hardened or weakened her. You were staking bets against yourself to see which it would be.)

The coup against the Empress herself, just shortly before the kits were ripe for ascension, easier than expected. That had been the part that worried you, because She was old, and She was cunning, and She was cold as the depths. She would sacrifice her whole fleet if necessary. Then again, so would you.

Only it wasn't. Treason from within brought her downfall, and you had to admit that your interest was piqued at how they could have even gotten hold of the Helmsman and enabled him to break his metaphorical and mental chains long enough to destroy the Battleship. It was a strange feeling for a moment, knowing some of the last as old as you (even if he should never have seen so many sweeps) blinking out. It was not hurt, not exactly, for all you might have shared lifetimes ago. A bittersweet nostalgia, maybe.

All in all, you might have been a bit disappointed in how anticlimatic the not-quite battle had been. And still, relieved, because for the first time in a very long life you could see how things really might change, but also were hardliners might stagnate in old ways. It once had taken you centuries yourself to discard similar archaic conceptions, so you knew well where to look for those who'd throw stones into the machinery of progress to try and grind it to a halt.

Chaos was expected, but a well-adjusted military machinery would continue to roll until someone ordered it to a stop. In some more obvious instances, you did. Others, you did not even give a thought. That was something your Child Empress, too, would learn; that while old habits die hard, old bureaucracy dies even harder. Helmhunters got hold of her newly-quadranted matesprit before she could even think it necessary to decree him (and those of caste) safe.

The irony of the whole situation was not lost on you. That you could have easily found him for her at once, had she only asked. But you were still busy enforcing her new peace on the outer reaches of her Empire, cutting down traditionalists where they would pop up, getting at least some fight out of this whole coup. Keeping your Child Empress safe at the new heart of her empire, while she was sure that her own heart was dying. She thought it more important to keep you at your task, never once thinking that with nearly the whole fleet at your command, and still more hidden resources at your beck and call, you could easily delegate certain tasks.

You did not have the heart to berate her for it. It showed that she at least tried to know how to set priorities, and you were secretly glad that this was not a lesson you had needed to teach her.

You only learned about that bureaucratic mishap when you returned, only when you spoke to her directly, because none of your contacts deemed some psionic disappearing important enough to include in their status updates (you made very sure that they would report in more detail in the future, those who would still report at all). Still, you worried at the familiarity she had developed when she buried her head on you chest to recount her worries under tears. True, your descendant played at being moirails with her once, and she might project some of those feelings to your person. You berated yourself for allowing it. Only the official Imperial Moirail should ever see their empress in such a state of distress. (Maybe the Imperial Kismesis, if they were that good.)  
It was only then she thought to order you to try and find him, even though it rather was a desperate plea. But you have worked on less.

It is so easy for you to get hold of him, or rather get your intention of purchase delivered to the right ears. You go the official route, even, just out of spite for the bureaucrazies. You can certainly afford it, all those centuries of gathering funds and experience have left you with enough of both to go on an expensive whim now and then.

You are old, and yet sometimes you are still enough of a little shit to enjoy watching the terror when those who thought themselves in charge realize who exactly they were dealing with. You immensely enjoy watching them squirm in horror when they realize they would have to deal with you _personally_. Some tasks, you do not want to delegate for the sheer glee of basking in that horror.

You are glad that they haven't decided to mutilate the kit for helming ahead of term, and go into great detail explaining your not-so-newfound fascination with the new helming techniques that keep helmsmen more or less sane and and whole (depending, of course, how you'll fill their 'free time'). You even show them the setup, explaining that, however advanced it is, you'll need more than one helmsman to keep the strain distributed, or they might burn out just as fast as in a traditional setup. Most of which is an artful lie, but it helps that your current has the lights flickering in what promises hell for you once she'll get her claws into you (and you might let a smile flicker across your face because you are looking forward to this). It does, however, help convince the handlers of your very point.

You don't tell them how you got word that they got hold of a psion whose power ratings are off the charts. All they need to know is that you want him, and that you have the means and the intention to pay for him. They do try to wheedle for information at first, but a smile is enough to let them rethink. More the teeth that smile might show. You do not even bother to negotiate the outrageous price they state. There is no better way to show them that they are simply not worth your time.

You're not gonna lie, if this weren't a ruse, your compliments about their work would hold more truth and less sweet poison. On a strictly professional level, you have to admire their methods. They begin breaking them early, just post-ascension, even earlier if they can, so that after the designated battery's adult molt, there won't be much resistance left, if any. Mostly, they would drag them out of their molt, confused with the new and still soft shells, mind and body easy to bend, to install them directly. That way, they tell you, the ship could be easily recognized as part of the new body after that final transformation, minimizing the psychological strain of having to adapt to the helm. On a more emotional level, you make a mental note to get hold of some psychological devaluation papers of former helmsmen from their facility to see whether there was anything true to their convictions.

After all, they begin breaking them early.

They pride themselves that the deflection rating of helmsmen from their facility is among the lowest, barely statistically relevant at all. They do neglect to mention what they do to those they cannot break, or break too far.

Therefore, you are not surprised that what they usher into your quarters is far from the sparking little bundle of attitude-covered anxiety issues you had seen a few times when you met with your Child Empress. What they deliver is a perfect little slave, docile and well-behaved to a tee, attentive but unobtrusive. (If you were still prone to less practical emotion, it would seize your collapsing and expanding bladder based aquatic vascular system that they did not even think it necessary to chain him or even put psionic dampers on him.)  
  
When you commend the excellent physical condition he is in and joke about rather keeping him for yourself, his custodians laugh and assure you that also for that, their charges' obedience training would hold. Something in your smile must glitch at that, and you catch a flicker of real fear in their faces (and mirrored in the slave's carefully blank expression, gone from there as fast as it occurred). You make the decision to take great care in _taking care_ of these caretakers. Personally. It will be easy to deploy some of your own to their posts; enough high-ranking personnel owes you. You'll just need to deploy those that would artfully deflect any surprised questions at the sudden changes in the facility's mode of operation.

There is no flicker of recognition to the boy's face, which grates at you a bit. After all, you are not used to being perceived as forgettable. But it is safer that way, it wouldn't do for the trainers to think you soft.

You might put more sweet venom into the final touches of your business than necessary. But it's their own damned fault, they tried to hand you a fucking manual, of all things, as if dealing with a broken slave was a concept completely foreign to you. Maybe their presumptuousness should flatter you, but it doesn't. You amuse yourself by offering them tea, in your personal quarter, no less, and letting them fret over whether you intend to poison them or will cull them for impoliteness should they dare decline. Of course, you do not poison them. (Not _much_ at least.) After all, you have already started to plan what fun to have with them later. Their nearly tangible relief when they are allowed to leave your ship ( _for now_ ) is all the more amusing for it.

You allow yourself some time to wind down by yelling at your crew and ordering them around for a bit, as if they wouldn't know how to work efficiently. They indulge you by trying to cower in fear, but they know you too well, and you them. Still, it is the thought that counts. Only when your personal display starts to show increasingly scathing status updates by your current helmsman about your crew's likeliness to mutiny for the day, but also about your newest acquisition, you do suck it up and slink back towards your quarters.

If you were still young and cruel enough, you could shirk that responsibility. After all, you got your Empress' little chewtoy back for her. Or rather, what was left of him. And that was the real problem, wasn't it, because bringing back this broken thing to her would most likely break her, too.

Maybe it would be far kinder for both of them just to cull him and only then take him back for her to find closure. You might have muttered this idea while walking, because you find your access to your own quarters blocked. And a message on the small door display, libelous enough that it should never have made it around the built-in feedback filters helmsmen were running under. (As if your own had not disabled those sweeps ago.)  
You know she is not aiming for your pitch quadrant, not by far, the disbalance would be fatal, but you still find yourself momentarily swayed into beginning to hate her that way. Just a bit. Just for a breath, until you hash it out with her that killing the boy would not be your first option.

So it is still with a heavy soul, but with less murderous intent (however well-meant), that you reluctantly enter your own quarters to face a responsibility all your years of fighting and scheming did not prepare you for. Maybe you are growing soft in your old age. You still quietly chide yourself for not returning earlier when you find the kit in about exactly the same spot and position you left him in, hours ago.

He is well trained indeed. Acquired by that training you do not want to think about too much, he makes every effort to appear neutral, eager even, just waiting for whatever orders you might deign to give. (He doesn't know that you can feel his heart gallop in terror and taste his fear on the air.)

You heave a sigh.

“Ah grubling, what in all depths am I goin' to do with you?”

**Author's Note:**

> Will this be a stand-alone piece or a setup for a new series? I don't know yet ^^" But I needed some softer Dualscar to balance another thing I am cooking up.


End file.
